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You lived it, you own it

I’m listening to a book that reminds me how I helped cause the financial collapse of 2007-2008. (Maybe you did, too.) I just finished a book that reminded me how I helped cause the oil crisis of the 1970s. (You’re probably too young to share that blame.) And of course just about everything I read of late reminds me how I’m helping to cause climate change. (Yes, you, too.)

It’s one thing to read history from before you were an adult; it’s just not your fault. But once you are an adult — especially in a country as free as ours — you get a degree of responsibility for the way your culture develops and your political leaders act — even if you voted against them.

My current book is All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera. Ever since I found out that the house my wife and I sold with surprising ease in 2001 went into foreclosure only a few years later, I’ve figured we were among the “winners” in the great mortgage racket of the past generation, even though we’d never heard of such a thing at the time.

Few of us are big-time decision makers, but how each of us lives adds to the total picture our leaders use when they make decisions that will affect us and our descendants. We may be products of our culture, but we all help create it as well.